


Something is Real, Something is Ours

by on_my_toes



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief glimpse at life in captivity if Katniss had been taken with Peeta and Johanna at the end of Catching Fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something is Real, Something is Ours

As soon as the guards leave he says it again, just like he does every time.

 

“Your name is Katniss.” His voice is raw, permanently marred from the screaming. “You’re the girl on fire.”

 

It’s my turn to speak. I open my mouth, hearing the words in my head, unable to say them out loud. For a moment I’m stuck, the dead, unspoken words slipping hopelessly from my lips. My eyes squeeze shut.

 

“Katniss,” he says.

 

He’s begging me. Pleading.

 

“ _Katniss_.”

 

He needs to know I’m still here—that they haven’t taken me yet, that they haven’t succeeded in twisting the memories that are now muddled beyond repair. He needs to hear me say it the same way I need him. So we know something is real. Something is ours.

 

In my inability to speak I hear a sound escape him, something low and mournful and agonizing. I can’t do this to him. I have to speak.

 

It takes a few more moments. “You’re Peeta,” I manage. My voice is barely above a whisper, but even three cells away I know he hears me. “You’re the boy with the bread.”

 

He laughs. I’ve never heard him laugh the way he laughs here, and I’m glad that I’m not with him to see the expression that accompanies it. I curl my knees to my chest and the shackles on my legs click in the silence. For a long while none of the prisoners speak.

 

“I’m Johanna.” Her crass voice echoes through the prison. I almost forgot she was here. “I’m the girl who would kill for some steak.”

 

* * *

 

I don’t know why we’re here. Weeks ago— _months ago?—_ they took us from the arena. I can’t remember why, can only barely remember the arena itself. Most of what I know about our abduction is through Johanna.

 

I’ve established very little in my time of imprisonment, but I understand one thing: Johanna knows something we don’t. The guards dismiss her as if she doesn’t, but for some reason she remembers the arena, remembers being taken, when Peeta and I don’t remember anything.

 

Then again, they haven’t been playing tricks on her the way they have with us. Reassembling our memories, trying to turn us against each other. It maybe would have worked if Johanna weren’t situated directly between our cells. She reminds us of the lies, tries to help us reconstruct everything before the next round of torture.

 

We all know it can only last for so long before one of us breaks. Selfishly, I hope it isn’t me. I’ve done enough to hurt Peeta in this lifetime.

 

* * *

 

“Tell us about District Thirteen.”

 

_If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did District Thirteen._

 

The face of the guard swims above me. They used to wear masks, the guards. The day they showed their faces was the day I knew I’d never be allowed to leave—it was the day when they stopped worrying I’d be able to come after them, and it meant defeat.

 

I don’t say anything. Words are useless, and surely by now they know they won’t get anything valuable out of me.

 

The guard grabs the collar of the meager shirt I’m wearing and shoves me to my feet. The shackles around my wrists and ankles protest, the chains too short to allow me to stand.

 

“What do you know?”

 

I shut my eyes, squeeze my fists, anticipating the blows before they come.

 

_We’re headed for District Thirteen._

 

Bonnie and Twill. I see them in my mind’s eye, one of my few, sacred memories the Capitol never knew to touch.

 

Something strikes my head. I don’t cry out. It only upsets Peeta.

 

_Thirteen? There is no Thirteen. It got blown off the map._

 

A blow to my stomach knocks me back on my knees. I gasp, but another one comes before I can find any air. I squeeze my eyes tighter, blocking it out, grasping at the only things that keep me human. Prim. Peeta. My mother. Gale.

 

“If you don’t tell us, he’ll die.”

 

I’ve heard this threat before. They’re telling him the same thing about me three cells away. They won’t kill him, not while they still think one of us has information worth anything to them.

 

For a moment I feel nothing. There is silence. I crack an eye open, but I still feel it before I see it—the telltale wires poking into my skin, the warning of the agony I’m about to endure.

 

“No,” I cry out before I can stop myself. “No, please!”

 

_The idea that Thirteen has somehow rebounded_ and _the Capitol is ignoring it? That sounds like the kind of rumor desperate people cling to._

 

“Katniss!” I hear Peeta scream, but then he’s gone, and so are the dark, rotting walls of my cell. The world around me is transformed, and I’m in the arena, the first arena, dangling helplessly from the Cornucopia as the mutts nip at my feet.

 

Peeta’s face looms above me.

 

“Help,” I yell to him.

 

His features twist in front of my eyes. His mouth curls into a sneer, his eyebrows furrow into an almost inhumanly deep scowl, and his eyes—his eyes are black as coal.

 

“Peeta, please! Help me!”

 

His hands are on mine, and there is a small swell of hope in my chest that he might save me, that he might still be the boy with the bread, until his hands start burning through my skin. I cry out in agony and he just smiles. He’s doing this on purpose, letting me dangle here, waiting for me to realize the full horror of my descent to the mutts before it happens.

 

His eyes contract into menacing slits just before he drops me. I scream the whole way down, hit the ground with a thud—

 

— above me stands the guard, ripping the needles out of my skin, freeing me from the nightmare.

 

For a while I just lay there, panting. The prison is darker now. Hours must have passed. I cling to my own shackles, just breathing, pressing my cheek to the cold floor.

 

“Katniss?”

 

I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m supposed to answer her. I remember a lot of things, horrible things, real things and unreal things. Nothing is certain, nothing is true, but I have to answer her.

 

“Katniss. You have to remember.”

 

“Peeta,” I say, flat and robotic, in a voice that does not belong to me. The words feel like acid on my tongue. It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it must be a lie, but I say it anyway. “Peeta is the boy with the bread.”

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes it takes minutes. Usually it takes hours. It seems to take longer and longer every time the guards leave us, but eventually Johanna painfully, meticulously sorts through the lies and sets us right again. After this particular time we lay back, exhausted by our efforts, settling into the silence of our prison.

 

“What if there really is a District Thirteen?” Peeta asks thoughtfully to himself.

 

I don’t answer, pretending I’m asleep. I don’t want to play “what if” games, don’t want to think for a second that there might be hope of getting out of this place. Hope is far more painful than despair.

 

It’s just another open-ended question we can’t help but say aloud in the quiet hours. Just as I’ve determined to ignore him and let the cells settle back into their usual quiet, Johanna answers him.

 

I’ve never heard such venom in her voice when she answers with a question of her own. “If there truly is a District Thirteen,” she says lowly, “then why have they abandoned us?”

 


End file.
